July 17, 2006

In just a few years PHP has rapidly evolved from a small niche language
to a powerful web development tool. Now in use on over 14 million Web
sites, PHP is more stable and extensible than ever. However, there is no
documentation on how to extend PHP; developers seeking to build PHP
extensions and increase the performance and functionality of their PHP
applications are left to word of mouth and muddling through PHP internals
without systematic, helpful guidance. Although the basics of extension
writing are fairly easy to grasp, the more advanced features have a
tougher learning curve that can be very difficult to overcome. This is
common at any moderate to high-traffic site, forcing the company hire
talented, and high-priced, developers to increase performance. With
Extending and Embedding PHP, Sara Golemon makes writing extensions within
the grasp of every PHP developer, while guiding the reader through the
tricky internals of PHP.